Maternal Labour Supply and School Enrolment Laws: Empirical Evidence from Brazilian Primary School Reforms
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Alessandro Cusimano
,
Diego da Silva Rodrigues
Abstract
The relationship between childcare provision and mothers’ labour supply decisions is highly debated due to the potential reverse causality and resultant empirical challenges. We contribute meaningfully to this debate by discussing the effects from a reform on Brazil’s primary education system on maternal labour supply. This reform, which advanced the compulsory children’s enrolment in primary education schools from the age of 7–6, is interpreted as the provision of free childcare. Due to the imperfect compliance of the reform implementation, children’s month of birth is used as an instrumental variable to control for the endogeneity present in any actual school enrolment. We show that the reform presented a positive effect on the labour supply of (1) the Brazilian single mothers and (2) the least educated mothers, increasing their participation in labour market by 12.9 % and furthermore a probability of becoming full time workers by 10.9 %.
The World Bank data for female labor force participation rates are shown in Table A1. For Brazil, the rate of about 55 % provides an interesting contextualization for our study. This rate for Brazil is comparatively higher than other countries in the neighboring region and the average for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as higher than the global average value. However, the Brazilian figure is lower than developed countries in North America plus it is also lower than East Asia and Pacific, although still in line with the European figure.
Selected female labour force participation rates (2005).
| Female labour force participation rate: selected regions and areas | (%) 2005 |
|---|---|
| Argentina | 49.1 |
| Australia | 57.0 |
| Brazil | 55.6 |
| Canada | 61.7 |
| France | 50.5 |
| Germany | 51.2 |
| Greece | 42.4 |
| Mexico | 41.2 |
| United Kingdom | 55.4 |
| United States | 58.2 |
| East Asia & Pacific | 61.9 |
| Europe | 49.0 |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 50.2 |
| World | 49.8 |
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Source: World Bank.
Descriptive statistics of the variables.
| Variable | Description | Mean | Standard deviation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy implementation | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother lives in a state where the reform is implemented, and zero in the opposite case | 0.735 | 0.128 |
| Attending school | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the youngest child of the household, aged 6, is attending the first grade of the primary school, and zero in the opposite case | 0.425 | 0.286 |
| Child’s month of birth | Discrete variable which indicates the month of birth of the youngest child of the household, aged 6 (January =1, February=2 … December =12) | 5.264 | 3.157 |
| Mother’s age | Age of the mother, in years. | 28.753 | 6.824 |
| White | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother is (self-declared) white, and zero in the opposite case | 0.475 | 0.126 |
| 5 years of study | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother has 5 years of study, and zero in the opposite case | 0.257 | 0.169 |
| 6–8 years of study | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother has between 6 and 8 years of study, and zero in the opposite case | 0.384 | 0.175 |
| 9 years of study | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother has 9 years of study, and zero in the opposite case | 0.182 | 0.169 |
| 10–11 years of study | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother has 10 or 11 years of study, and zero in the opposite case | 0.137 | 0.187 |
| 12 years of study | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother has 12 years of study, and zero in the opposite case | 0.149 | 0.092 |
| 13 or more years of study | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother has 13 or more years of study, and zero in the opposite case | 0.095 | 0.194 |
| Youngest child is male | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the youngest child of the household, aged 6, is male, and zero in the opposite case | 0.483 | 0.152 |
| Other mother’s income | Monthly deflated incomes of the mother not related to their labour, including cash transfers, in BRL | 328.74 | 152.86 |
| Other incomes in the household | Monthly deflated incomes available in mother’s household, excluding mother’s income, in BRL | 1758.26 | 752.45 |
| 2 children else in the household | Dummy variable equal to 1 if there are 2 children else in the household apart from the youngest one, and zero in the opposite case | 0.257 | 0.214 |
| 3 to 6 children else in the household | Dummy variable equal to 1 if there are between 3 and 6 children else in the household apart from the youngest one, and zero in the opposite case | 0.356 | 0.276 |
| 7 children else or more in the household | Dummy variable equal to 1 if there are 7 or more children else in the household apart from the youngest one, and zero in the opposite case | 0.084 | 0.128 |
| 1 adult in the household | Dummy variable equal to 1 if there are 2 children else in the household apart from the youngest one, and zero in the opposite case | 0.752 | 0.362 |
| 3 adults or more in the household | Dummy variable equal to 1 if there are 3 adults or more in the household, including mother’s partner, and zero in the opposite case | 0.352 | 0.214 |
| Mother is a migrant | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the mother lives in state where she was not born, and zero in the opposite case | 0.114 | 0.368 |
| Grandmother lives in the same household | Dummy variable equal to 1 if the youngest child’s grandmother lives in the same household, and zero in the opposite case | 0.196 | 0.175 |
| State unemployment rate | Average annual unemployment rate (state level in %) | 8.42 | 1.16 |
Table A3 shows that the youngest child’s school attendance is not statistically correlated to mothers’ part-time labour supply. However, it is correlated to the mothers’ full-time labour supply.
Effects of youngest child’s attendance in the first grade of primary school on mother’s labour supply.
| Outcome variable: mother’s labour supply | Multinomial logit | |
|---|---|---|
| Part-time | Full-time | |
| School attendance | 0.003 | 0.202*** |
| (0.072) | (0.052) | |
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***Significant 1 %; base outcome is mothers’ labour supply equal to 0 h (no labour supply).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Tradeoffs in the Power of Regulatory Regimes
- Pay as You Throw Threshold Tariff: Evidence on the Incentive to Recycle
- Industrial Technology Boundary, Product Quality Choice, and Market Segmentation
- Human Capital Investments and Family Size in Italy: IV Estimates Using Twin Births as an Instrument
- Maternal Labour Supply and School Enrolment Laws: Empirical Evidence from Brazilian Primary School Reforms
- Pricing Personalised Drugs: Comparing Indication Value Based Prices with Performance Based Schemes
- The Impact of Migration on Productivity: Evidence from the United Kingdom
- In the Eye of the Storm: The Disrupted Career Paths of Young People in the Wake of COVID-19
- Separating the Accountability and Competence Effects of Mayors on Municipal Spending
- Letters
- Close But Not Too Close? Optimal Copycat Strategies in the Light of Negative Publicity by the Original Product
- Keeping Mobile Firms at Home: The Role of Public Enterprise
- The Trouble with Take-Up
- Sex Ratio and Terrorist Group Survival
